Attracting New Members & Keeping the Old Ones

Given that the Greek team has lost all its active members, I was wondering if there are any tested (or not) ways to attract new members to a team. Please feel free to share your thoughts and experiences on this issue. If there is much input, if you want, you can pin-post it, because I am sure every co-ordinator would like to know some ways to bring more members to his/her team.

The only thing I have come up until now is to put annotations in every released video asking for help with translations (and contact greeklingteam@gmail.com). Other than that, I am trying to re-activate older members who had subscribed to some pootle projects based on what they subscribed to or translated.

Feel free to add more.

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1st of all, I´m not a team coordinator, but given that I have a project on that area, I thought I might share with you.

One thing that worked a few times is publishing it on Facebook pages. I´m moderating a TZM portuguese facebook page and some times, along with an image, a video or a link I share, I mention the LTI work on translating it and ask for volunteers. I am a living proof that it works, since that was what made me come here, since I respond to an appeal from the person who was doing it before me. So if you are connected to someone who moderates a facebook page for TVP or TZM, maybe that should be an interesting advertising method.

But what made me ansewr to your appeal was the fact that I just started preparing myself for making a workshop for the next Z-Day in two cities in Portugal, about the LTI work. I´ll take the opportunity to help others feel at ease with the forum and the translation tools, and motivated to help with translations. Also, all the techical help from designers and programmers can come from this workshop. That´s an idea.

But I think we should get the help from TVP Global and Zeitgeist Movement P.R. people on calling for help and advertising our work and our needs.

I´m inspiring my self on a few things that already have been done and that you could use:

I am sure every co-ordinator would like to know some ways to bring more members to his/her team.

Thanks for posting that question, Christos. Yes, I would like to hear what others say about attracting new members. But perhaps the real issue is not so much about attracting new members, but in understanding why our active members disappear.

((hugs))
Di

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I was attracted to the Linguistic Team in the end of the last year. Sue stated in one of the seminars of TVPEducation, that you could need help translating. So that worked for me. Nevertheless it took me some time to do the step and really write an email. In the end it helped, that Sue stated the same again and again in every Video she was involved in.

Thanks for the input, all of you. I think I see Di's point, though. Maybe the root issue here is how a coordinator can keep the already active members active. For example, in the Greek team we have encountered the same phenomenon many a time: Α volunteer shows up, either for a specific project or not, he/she starts a translation, and we never hear from him/her again. It's like the 're eaten by a linguistic ghost

What do you guys think?

Signature from »Christos Pap.«

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Now seriously, I´m not sure what happens to people who abandon they´re projects and the LTI team. I needed a month off after some intense work for severall months. But I did came back. I´ve been moderating an Zeitgeist Facebook page and that showed me how important it is to have new, good quality material to share. That notion of how important this is made come back even more.

So. Maybe people don´t understand how important this is to spread the message, the knowledge. Maybe most people come in with lots of expectations on how their work will affect the change they think is necessary, and not seeing it happening right away makes them give up ... or doubting that this will never make any difference.

Dealing with how complicated the forum seems at first is one factor. Dealing with how complicated dotsub and pootle seem at first is another. Dealing with how much work it is translating and proofreading is yet another. So maybe the question isn´t why do most give up, because thats really easy to understand, but why do we keep doing it instead of giving up... and that should be what we need to pass on to others. At least that´s what I´ll try to make others understand in the workshop I´m planning.

What keeps me here is a quite deep understanding of what is a RBE, how the world would be in one, and how it might be, very soon, if we don't get to an RBE. There are many aspects in this issue; most people I talked about this with, and that I saw them coming to LTI and going for nevermore, didn't understood several aspects of all of this. That plays on their motivation, which is put on a scale with all the factors that Cláudia mentioned in this thread. These offline life factors, for me, these last days now, weigh more than the motivation factors on the scale, for most of the day. I have to think of food, housing, socialization and sustainability of all these factors. But there is much more; all the info that is around me and making what I am less aligned, or focused is better word maybe, on the transition to an RBE. And so happens with us all. On Mondays we are less aligned, on weekends we are more; for others might be the opposite, especially if they have kids and weekend activities. But this offline information that makes our conscience obeys to the same laws as the online information in that conscience and focus project. If not much info passes in front of someone, along the day, and especially in the end of the day when one comes online, the chances are that person will end up doing something else than translating a video. It's all degrees of exposure. I used to send huge amounts of info about the need for volunteers and the amazing projects we have, with the help of Ray, Di and others to create the best text, clear, with purpose, implying global collaboration for spreading this awareness of the new video's content, etc... and perfecting that approach from project to project, from the text structure to the links and path we draw for people to get started, to where do we publish it, how do we receive the volunteers and try to support them so they don't quit, etc.. It is fun!! And there is always someone coming. But very few stay indeed.

On thing that I am repeating for quite a while, but not sure of myself when I see so many people not adjusting their behavior to it, is that we are, ourselves, creating that scarcity when we develop our methods. Many factors are negative because we built them in. Skype and facebook chats and emails allow only for 2 or a group of people to see the info. Everyone else is not aware of that info and so was not exposed enough to be proactive in helping. Besides that, a 1 to 1 contact does not allow for the volunteers to see all this community of the LTI, and even how it connects with the rest of the RBE community, and that is one of the most motivating factors for me to be around as much as I am: realizing the beautiful global movement of people towards this common goal, and we focuse on translating the content into codes so people have at least the chance to be exposed, since they don't know english. But then we limit ourselves in our platforms, not allowing for a lot of people to be informed, like in a forum or FB page, being it LTI, TVP TZM or any other, and then we say we don't understand why people aren't here more often. Well, they aren't being exposed enough, and life is either hard or full of distractions out there in this sea of info. Like Jacque says "it only means you didn't knew how to get to them". We need more quantity of info; regularity and to do it where many people see it. Those who manage a FB page have an idea of how many people see a post. Then we have to remind ourselves that their minds are running a wall full of them, and always loading 'new' stuff. We could be posting regularly in TZM and TVP Global facebooks and adding info in the end of subtitles and video notifications, and that alone would be enough to give us 'too much' work receiving volunteers. It is not hard. If I am giving orientation to 3 or 4 volunteers in the same week, they can take over most of my time online, depending how much autonomous or less, how much chatty they are too Just kidding. It is one of the most fun parts of all of this; but it can become not so fun if I have my mind telling me that I have stuff to do cuz I have the FB Page and the Youtube video that is still half loaded, and the new error repport and bla bla bla We have to leave all the blas out of our minds when being WITH a new volunteer. "The person in front of you is the most important in the world". Learned it with Ray, but still practicing on it

Nothing else on my mind to share now. But I am all willing to get our hands on the strategies of posting in the TVP and TZM Global facebooks and increasing the translation need references in the YT channels, from subs to notifications and video descriptions. We do it efficiently and considering these powerful resources, or there is not much point in posting it in the LTI FB group and share it in our personal walls and hope new volunteers will show up. Is like building houses with hammers and nails when you have amazing technology today. We are the "linguistic team" of volunteers that translate the stuff from TZM and TVP. So why not one of us have access to the FBs and add a post about a new translation project every day? Same with the YT channels. Goes a while since we discuss and even agree with these strategies but I don't understand what is needed to take them forward. Ray and Vixi are the 2 persons with most contact with TVP and TZM and the YT and FB managers on both sides. Can you guys do anything towards that, in any way you find appropriate to approach the rest of TZM and TVP with these suggestions?

Rodrigo, I am afraid I did not understand the part about "we limit ourselves in our platforms, not allowing for a lot of people to be informed". Where do we limit ourselves? We have a forum which everyone can see. Do you mean that the forum is limiting or do you mean something else?

I also did not understand the part about posting in the TVP/TZM channels. How could we promote the team and ask for help via these channels?

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To come to the meetings, install teamspeak from HERE and then press HERE to be transferred directly, and look for the "Linguistic Team" Channel.

I just sent a message to ~TZM Global facebook page, aking them to advertise the LTI work and asking for volunteers. If you have problems on you language team, maybe you could do the same, or tell me and I´ll ask them for you. I´m planning doing the same thing with the TVP facebook page. Those who know best what LTI needs most, please tell-me and I´ll spread the word on facebook.

Christos, Rod is describing the effects of using private chat resources (Skype, PMs, FB chat, email, etc.) instead of the forum for communications.
To try to sum it up, if we're not providing what we think of as commonly shared knowledge within the forum or out in Facebook and other very public resources, it ceases to be commonly shared info and very few people become aware of it, let alone integrate it into their daily activities or thinking.

As for posting in TVP & TM channels, we've got all of the connections needed to support that as I am a long-time admin of the TVP Page & Group, an admin in the TZM group and a content creator in the TZM page. I don't have the time to satisfy the frequency of posts that this requires, it would not take much to connect a member of our PR Group with any of them. What we need are people with the time, energy, writing skills and wide awareness of LTI activities (especially our all-important global distribution efforts) who can actually do it. The PR Group needs to grow into a team of collaboration, all working together (even part-time) to develop LTI's outreach over time. But more often than not, it has only been Rod, helped on a few occasions by one other person, doing everything he possibly could to just get the PR Group established. In addition to wide-spread promoting of LTI & completed projects, he occasionally tried to also promote the need for more people to help with the PR Group needs, but just like our language teams, it's often quite difficult to attract people who are already locked into other project focuses.

One of the issues that became apparent to me a long time ago is that it's very much a matter of timing. I'll try to explain.
The ideal transcriber/translator is not new to the RBE concept. New community members are not usually familiar enough with the big picture to accurately understand the meaning behind everything they are being asked to transcribe/translate, so they tend to make more comprehension errors that result in frustration for them (and maybe to a lesser degree, for the folks who take over proofreading the project after them).

But many of those who are not so new to the RBE concept tend to have also found numerous other projects, groups and interests that also compete for their time & attention, which often brings with it decisions that have to be made on how they can best spend their limited time helping what they feel is important. If given a choice between two project focuses and they find that one is quick & easy while the other turns out to be time & thought-intensive, it's much easier to spend more (or all) or their time doing the easier stuff. What we do here is obviously not easy, at least not if we want to do it well, so LTI often loses members to smaller projects with a much quicker 'payoff' schedule.

For me, all of that translates to us needing to understand that it becomes a bit of a "numbers game". Personally, I've found that it takes helping maybe a hundred new people integrate into LTI in order to end up with perhaps 10 - 15 who actually do anything. And out of that 10, maybe one to three will become a more permanent 'member'. This has basically held true no matter how I went about trying to help them acclimate themselves to the tasks (giving too much or too little info), which led me to conclude long ago that this kind of work simply requires people who both want to improve themselves in this area of communication and who understand well enough the global importance/implications of the results we're attempting to accomplish here. Both of those qualities tend to grow in those who eventually become more permanent members (including part-timers), yet shrink in those who don't.

So, my suggestion is for us to focus on how clearly we communicate these needs and opportunities to people in a way that attracts more of the type of people who are more likely to have these traits.

Dealing with how complicated the forum seems at first is one factor. Dealing with how complicated dotsub and pootle seem at first is another. Dealing with how much work it is translating and proofreading is yet another.

That's exactly what I thought, when arriving here. Another point was, that there was nobody in the German Linguistic Team who responded in a reasonable time for me. It was only Sue responding via email and she didn't know the specifics of the German team, of course. Nomada was responding in the forum but did as well not know the specifics of the Germans. The German team was completely in sleeping mode and besides of franky it still is.

For me, all of that translates to us needing to understand that it becomes a bit of a "numbers game". Personally, I've found that it takes helping maybe a hundred new people integrate into LTI in order to end up with perhaps 10 - 15 who actually do anything. And out of that 10, maybe one to three will become a more permanent 'member'. This has basically held true no matter how I went about trying to help them acclimate themselves to the tasks (giving too much or too little info), which led me to conclude long ago that this kind of work simply requires people who both want to improve themselves in this area of communication and who understand well enough the global importance/implications of the results we're attempting to accomplish here. Both of those qualities tend to grow in those who eventually become more permanent members (including part-timers), yet shrink in those who don't.

I wasn't able to try it till now (because of the lack of new people in the German team), but it probably helps to assign very well staked out tasks to the new people at first like proofreading a Titanpad for a 10 min video.
As I experienced myself, there are also people who want to adorn themselves with borrowed plumes. Franky experienced that too. They come here and say, they want to help, but if you pin them down, you realize very soon, that they just want the results of the working volunteers to present them to their friends, so they can say "I am changing the world. Look at me!" Of course I am not speaking for everyone, but for some people. As I see it, that's just another aberrant result of our current society, so we should not bother ourselves too much with it and just go on doing, what we do.

Τhanks for the helpful input, guys. I have also noticed that it is essential to know how important it is what we are doing here along with its global impact. Like Ossi said, ever since I've been a co-ordinator of the Greek team, almost every volunteer came for a specific project. I am not judging that, but maybe we shouldn't be too concerned about that, since this is an outgrowth of our culture. That's why we are here, right? To change it!

So, maybe we should focus on us more. Maybe some tasks seem too "big" for us, because we have not tried to see how they're done, when we do not feel that we can do it full-time. Maybe someone like me does not realize that every little of bit helps. I would really like to see if I can help in the PR Group, even if not full-time. If anyone out there is interested, please submit it in this thread so that Rod can take us for a ride together. Come on, guys. Where are you going to find a better company?

Signature from »Christos Pap.«

To come to the meetings, install teamspeak from HERE and then press HERE to be transferred directly, and look for the "Linguistic Team" Channel.

Like Ossi said, ever since I've been a co-ordinator of the Greek team, almost every volunteer came for a specific project. I am not judging that, but maybe we shouldn't be too concerned about that, since this is an outgrowth of our culture. That's why we are here, right? To change it!

Maybe someone like me does not realize that every little of bit helps. I would really like to see if I can help in the PR Group, even if not full-time. If anyone out there is interested, please submit it in this thread so that Rod can take us for a ride together. Come on, guys. Where are you going to find a better company?

I really enjoyed finding all this participation in this thread. Cool! Really enjoyed reading you all.

I have a suggestion to what you suggested, Christos. Me and @kassy: are starting a new project which we call 'RBE Think Tank', and the purpose is to gather contents in any format and send them as articles or suggested and semi-guided researches to different media to see if they publish them. It all depends on their characteristics and what you wish to spread or reach. For example, we created a suggestion of a post with an image with a quote and some descriptive text with a link to a video. Then we selected several Facebook pages with high ranking of viewers, like between 20.000 and 300K, and evaluating if their walls are very active, and send it to several if the content fits what they publish. It can be a Technological Unemployment article+ video to a magazine, a newspapper, a doc to a TV channel. If they do, you can have many thousands of people knowing about the Venus Project for the first time. Reaches much further than a FB page but serves a whole different function: take the content beyond RBE circles

The PR Group is the same structure, exactly. But aims at both the inner and the outer circle that defines those who already heard of RBE.
Me and Cláudia (Kassy) started in skype to buld up the project, but now that Priscila also joined and brought a list of emails from journalists, we have to think about using a platform that doesn't enclose us in skype. So we created a forum sub-section at the bottom of the Portuguese Language Team forum section for projects that aim at spreading RBE in portuguese. The RBE Think Tank is just one of them.
We can do a similar group for LTI PR Group and use google docs and the forum. Though we are using combinations of google docs + forum for a long time now and I get the impression I see a pattern here: after the projects grow a bit, any newcomer wont understand splif of the google sheet, folders and docs complex and we know how it is in the forum. I have no other ideas though.
Anyone else besides Christos wants to join?

@Ray: Enjoyed a lot reading you. Made perfect sense to me, everything in your exposure (anyone knows how to create smilleys? we could order one for (extensionaity)

The German team was completely in sleeping mode and besides of franky it still is.

This is important. Franky couldn't move threads and the thing got too messy.I offered help to move them for him but he probably needs time to order his head too and gain courage to dive. They have loads of projects there. But it seems more to keep things updated, to help any volunteer who don't uses their FB groups for not having FB or so, to still fnd him/herself. It would be great to bring the movement of the whole team to the forum, though. I quited FBs in the arabic and portuguese teams because it was driving me nuts following the projects and taking note of stuff in googlesheets and the forum so we could know where we are at any given moment. In that sense, a facebook is just to reach more people in a huge platform easy to connect people in brief moments. But then a page is much better and the forum does better what FB groups do. Just some thoughts that an my mind when i read your paragraph, Ossi.